Beer Salon in Bratislava

A few years ago the common belief was that you could get the best feeling of the city by visiting the classic market, today we can say that you can best catch the city’s vibe in the street food market. If we would grade Bratislava by this year’s Beer Festival, the city would get labeled as a super cool place full of interesting artisan producers who love beer and street food in all forms. Bratislava can be easily positioned along metropolises like Berlin and London in terms of that street vibe, and without difficulty, it can also compete with neighboring Budapest and Vienna. The event took place at the height of summer in one of the most attractive venues in the city center. The old market is a great location which attracts many event organizers with its spaciousness, location, and exceptional architecture. Its great advantage is a solid big square in front of the venue, where you can organize additional activities; in the case of the Beer Festival, the square was set up as a street food market.

The whole point of the Festival is to display the craft brewers’ scene. There were 51 exhibitors and 70 brewers. The Slovakian brewers were the strongest in number, but there were also microbreweries from Poland, Ukraine, and the neighboring Garden Brewery and Zmajska Brewery. The place was packed with good vibes of the more or less hipster tribe of all generations that enjoyed the exceptional tastes and styles of the creative brands of breweries. Here are some of the most exotic examples from the festival: Chernobeer Brewing, Lucky Bastard, Sibeeria, Beervana and Brew your Mind. The selection of tastes and flavours presented a whole range of styles, and almost every brewery had their own specialty, beers from India to ale to Belgian saison, blonde and tripel and classic lagers. The connoisseurs and the brewers think that this is the hardest one to produce, since every mistake can be tasted in it. The added aromas can greatly improve the taste of a beer. The point of the festival is that everyone chooses a beer that best suits their taste. From this point of view, the festival is completely comparable to wine tastings. The entrance fee included two beer jars that you could use for tasting and take home afterward. At the festival, visitors could only pay with the festival’s currency: coins worth 0.50 EUR.

The beer boom in Bratislava is a logical consequence of world trends and the beer tradition in Slovakia. According to the number of visitors, we can say that there are a lot of beer lovers in Slovakia. Among the visitors who are eagerly debating and testing new flavors there are also many women who undermine the stereotype of beer consumers with giant stomachs and long beards. The festival could certainly be considered as one of the best in Europe. As the beer tastes even better with good food, the story was beautifully rounded up by the street food festival with a varied offer, ranging from burgers to burritos and a top-class Slovak culinary offer. Among the classics, we also see a revival of the tradition of preparing drinks from soda and some delicious ice creams. A reliable sign that this was a good culinary event was the queue of waiting customers in front of the individual stalls. Mostly justified and in line with the laws on demand and supply. However, most importantly everyone was able to find something to their taste. More at: www.salonpiva.beer